


Amon's Sick Day

by Lamprey



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: M/M, lieumon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:04:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lamprey/pseuds/Lamprey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amon is sick, Liu makes him feel better, with tea, soup, and maybe some lovemaking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amon's Sick Day

“You can’t have any caffeine,” Liu sighs after Amon mimes sipping a tiny teacup while at his desk. “I can make you an herbal tea, or a floral tea like chrysanthemum.”  
  
Amon slowly blows air through his nostrils, the small nose slits creates tiny whistles. He overturns his hands slightly and drops them down. _Okay, fine._  
  
“If you don’t drink this soup, I will upend it on your paperwork.” Amon fixes Liu with an annoyed glance, all sternness with a wood tray of a steaming bowl dressed up in a white apron, then sets down his fountain pen. He only has a few seconds to scramble papers and empty teacups safely away (they clatter and roll in small spirals) before Liu sets the tray not so gently on the desk, the wool blanket slipping off Amon’s shoulders. Amon huffs tonelessly and peers at the soup with hunched, dejected shoulders as he pulls the blanket up.  
  
Three clawed chicken feet are hooked around the rim of the soup bowl, almost purposeful in its morbidity. Sliced leek floats lazily like logs in a base of cloudy, off-white liquid. There’s unidentified spongy cubes bobbing cheerfully around. Amon points at it with a quick jab.  
  
“Fish stomach,” Liu replies, almost proudly. “Good for your metabolism.” Liu takes a soup spoon from his apron and catches Amon’s hand as he tries to reel back in horror, placing it in the middle of his struggling palm. “The soup base is parsnip, ginger, and onion, everything has hot chi in it. You will eat the whole thing, I haven’t withdrawn my threat of upending it on your paperwork.”  
  
Amon’s eyes narrow in an attempt to pierce through Liu, but he is firm, and stands his ground, like always. With Liu looming above, Amon lifts his mask slightly so it faces up at Liu and sinks the soup spoon with shaking hands, letting the liquid flood in. It’s only barely out of the bowl before it splatters back into the bowl, droplets hitting the desk as Amon grabs his mouth like a vise and coughs, his throat threatening to turn itself inside out. It’s awful to Liu’s ears, despite having had a couple days to get used to the violent hacking, pathetic wheezes, and painful breaths. Liu reaches out with two fingers, presses them just below Amon’s collarbone, massaging in gentle circles. Amon’s coughing slows, he takes nervous breathes as they shudder out of his raw throat, he dares dropping his hand from his mouth. He meets Liu with searching eyes greeting Liu’s concerned, concentrated eyes.  
  
He hears the question without a word said. Years of service, warm spaces between sheets, of piercing gray-blue eyes blesses him with the ability to read without seeing, to know without seeing a face.  
  
“I know a little bit of acupressure. It’s easy to open them if you know how to block the chi points. The ones I am pressing is your elegant mansion points, good for sore throat, chest congestion, and cough.” Liu’s eyes become distant, his fingers still absent-mindedly drawing circles. “I used to do it for my daughter, when she got sick.”  
  
Amon knows he needs to pull Liu back from chasm, so he points at Liu’s fingers, then mimes waving undulating motions. Liu’s eyes refocuses and he laughs.  
  
“If only acupressure could heal like water! Wu’s infirmary would feel less like a hotel. Now, press those points for me, I haven’t forgotten about the soup, let’s get it in you before all the healing hot chi evaporates.” Liu pulls a chair from the corner and places it opposite of Amon, its legs clunk on the wood floor. He gently takes the spoon from Amon’s hands, leans forward and brushes his left thumb over the part of the chin untouched by porcelain. He lifts the mask (and shuts his eyes, like always), his thumb drifts over what he knows to be the unscarred side and it alights on dry, chapped, but soft lips.  
  
Amon wants to ask, “What are you doing?” but only manages a hoarse croak as a spoon full of hot soup presses insistently to his lower lip. Steam deposits dew on his nose as it weaves upwards in smells of parsnip, onions, and such. He breathes it in, finding it not displeasing, and parts his lips slightly, soup tipping into his mouth. Not too hot, but not lukewarm.  
  
“Not too bad, eh?” grins Liu with squeezed shut eyes, mustache falling like waterfalls from his upper lip. He feels the left corner of Amon’s lips lift up and away from his thumb. “You should know to trust me,” he says, with longing undercutting his words, his eyelids twitching, fighting his impulse to open.  
  
Trembling, cold fingers close around the elbow holding his face, and Amon gives Liu a gently squeeze. _Thank you,_ he says without saying.  
  
***  
  
“I should have the blueprints to Amon’s office by tomorrow. I used the designs from the old Fire Nation tanks for the treads, should definitely solve the terrain issue,” Hiroshi explains as he walks pace to pace with Liu, leading with his portly stomach.  
  
“Perfect. Once we get approval, we can start production on a prototype. You really outdid yourself this time.” Liu notices his own hands clasped behind him, and unclasps them, a slight pink color in his cheeks. Hiroshi doesn’t notice, he never does.  
  
“Wait until you see what I’m working on next, flying machines! We will discuss those with Amon next week,” he stops, gently grabs Liu’s forearm, “Speaking of, how is he?”  
  
“I finally convinced him to stop doing anything remotely work-related so he’s getting bed rest, he managed to whisper a few things to me today, so I would cautiously hope he’ll be back to work tomorrow, voice and all.”  
  
“Good to hear, good to hear, I guess even a leader with spiritual blessings cannot be immune to sickness” he pats his stomach, his usual outward expression of being pleased. “I will talk to you both tomorrow, good night, and wish a speedy recovery to Amon, will you?”  
  
“Absolutely.”  
  
***  
  
Liu gently opens the door, his eyes first seeing the outline of a blanket-wrapped figure in the bed hooked to the wall, breathing softly. He examines the desk, pens and pencils are where they were, papers are undisturbed. Good, he thinks, he didn’t try to sneak out and do work while I was away. This is a well-documented bad habit of Amon’s that Liu has little success suppressing. So Liu will document the placement of every pen, every paper, every thread, every speck of dust in his mind, and compare when he returns.  
  
He walks with soft steps to Amon, his eyes closed under porcelain, blankets wrapped tightly around his chest, hunched with his knees bent up. Spying the second blanket discarded against the wall, he pulls it as he climbs into the cramped bed, covers them both as he throws an arm around and embraces him close, fingers wrapped in sweaty, damp chestnut hair in the back, his forehead touching warm porcelain.  
  
Without opening his eyes, Amon whispers tonelessly, “You could get sick.”  
  
Liu whispers back, though he doesn’t need to. “I’ll take my chances. I drink a lot of tea.”  
  
Amon opens his eyes halfway, regarding Liu with a sleepy, unfocused stare. “I won’t be able to cook you a chicken feet monstrosity to make you get better if you fall sick, you old man.” His words hiss even more as they leave the mask.  
  
“Old man, eh? As far as I can see, you seem to be the one sick, young one.”  
  
“So it would seems,” concedes Amon, his eyes curved with a small smile before they fall shut again.  
  
***  
  
It’s a few hours later while they are wrapped blanket within blanket, when Liu finally hears words issue from the porcelain slit with a tone, a voice. A voice he’s missed over these couple of days.  
  
It’s a request. Liu is reluctant, but his lover insists, and Liu obliges.  
  
***  
  
It’s like a flood of sounds, more noisy than what they usually do, but Liu doesn’t mind, he misses his sounds. Their sounds. The thump-thump-thump of two bodies pressed to wooden wall, the complaining metal bed frame squeaking protests. Skin upon skin echoing inside their shared spaces.  
  
And Amon, of course. All rumbling moans and growling desires, and shouts of Liu’s names and yes’s and polite insisting. Liu surmises that Amon has also missed the sound of his own voice. He has, he enjoys the way it bounces off Liu’s body (pressed so close to his that there is not space between them), how it gets cut off by blind, searching lips, loses his words in Liu’s pale skin over and over again.  
  
Amon’s sweat-soaked back leaves shining streaks in the wall as its pressed back, similarly soaked sheets tangle around his thighs and calves and feet, spread on either side of Liu. His chestnut hair sticks to the wall texture, his head tilted up, another shout leaves his lips from Liu’s left shoulder.  
  
The tails of Liu’s red blindfold stick to his back, Liu gently rocks Amon into the wall, trapped somewhere between lust and concern as he traps his lover between heat and wood, hands flushed red grasped to flushed red hands.  
  
Somewhere, deep under layers upon layers of desire and want and concern and immediacy, Liu wonders if this action is considered hot chi.  
  
***  
  
“I thought you were getting better, Amon,” Hiroshi laments, perplexed. Amon shoots a look from porcelain, tries to pierce Liu on the ends of them. Hiroshi, as always, interprets the look wrong. He looks to Liu for a response.  
  
“He is better, it’s just his voice that hasn’t come back,” Liu replies, not a single hair in his mustache stirs in his seriousness. He hears Amon huff, his eyes bore into him, blaming him. Then he abruptly turns and walks away, hands clasped behind.  
  
And it’s clear to Liu, and Liu only, the imperceptible limp in Amon’s step.  
  
He smiles, knowing it is only for him to catch, to see.


End file.
